The first thing I want to record here is the most gonzo dreams I think I’ve ever had. Not sure I actually can record them, as they were so intense, weird and far ranging.
I’ll just do a stream of consciousness dump, and hope I get down a fraction of what is fast fading from waking consciousness (poss/prob a good thing?):
Rats, lots of flesh-eating poss’ humano-hybrid rats… segueing into totally weird (fungi style?) morphing psychedelic segment, a la Cal Schenkel animation, in which tendrils from nostrils morph and liquify, into, well… ‘everything everywhere all at once’.
Alien nuclear weapons, already trained on/or just randomly arriving at Earth. Multifaceted buildings coated with cellular windows, and locomotive train like projections, all over.
A sequence where simultaneously we’re dealing with a baby that falls into a river, is washed away, then rescued, and poss’ then sold; human trafficking (of semi-vegetative folk); meltdown at an outraged trailer park/campsite/fairground owner: and various other weird strands that now escape me.
I’ll leave the dream-dump there for now. I might return to it, as and when more of the psychedelic kaleidoscopic content returns to consciousness? One over-riding keynote throughout many parts of it all was being submerged in apocalyptic levels of fear.
Alas, that last – whilst most of the rest seems like a weird ‘mental flushing’ – seems only too well connected with the panic-inducing reality I’m currently facing, of zero-income vs. continuous outgoings.
But I want to move on to a related issue, which is where the ‘slight problem’ in the title of this post comes in. And that’s my current preference for sleep, or unconsciousness, as a state of being. Even if I’m dreaming frightening weird shit. Preferable, that is, at least – see yesterday’s forced self-awakening episode – up to a point.
Again this connects all too readily with the less than pleasant realities of my current situation. I want to be asleep or unconscious, because that’s way preferable to being awake and conscious, with all that the latter entails.
It’s a form, I guess, of pseudo-suicide. I can’t be bothered, or I’m not bold (or crazy/stupid?) enough to enact a real physical self-termination. But if I just effectively switch myself off, maybe it’ll ultimately amount to much the same thing?
Like my dreams this morning. This is rolling along fairly scary lines, to be honest. Maybe some context will illuminate things a little? Maybe not? Who knows. I feel I’m past caring but I hope I’m wrong about that?
Anyway, I generally go to bed between about 7.30-8.30pm these days. I like to turn in early. Maybe do a bit on the blog. And definitely – as long as I’m not too tired to do even this – to read.
Reading is one pleasurable activity I can still regularly engage in. Currently I’m nearing the end of volume three of Shelby Foote’s The Civil War. I’m slightly dreading reaching the end, partly ‘cause I’m not sure what to read next.
Last night – and this is happening increasingly frequently at the moment – I woke around 3am. Most often, as indeed with last night, I will simply try and get back to sleep. Often this takes a good while. Normally I’ll have rain sounds playing, in the YT app, to help me slumber.
I might do something on my phone – but I try not to (screen time can be over-stimulating) – or I may read. Very occasionally I’ll get up and do stuff. The main aim is to get back to sleep. And once there, stay there.
I’m acutely and painfully aware that really I need to be up and active, to address my current problems. But I’m simultaneously acutely and painfully aware that I really don’t want to be.
I certainly need to expand my affirmation cue-card set, which is currently predominantly about trying to relax and not super-stress, to include much more active doing stuff type admonitions.
But I desperately need to somehow train or cajole my kind into wanting to be awake/conscious and dealing with, aka solving, my current livelihood (and other) conundrums.
My attempts to sell stuff, mostly musical instruments at this point, feel like pissing into a force 10 gale, so far. I suppose I need to expand these efforts, and add a whole load of other shit: books and models, for example.
But again, it all feels like too little and too late. So why even bother?
WHY???
To avert utter catastrophe… you dumbass nincompoop!
I think I’d better call Samaritans, immediately. And the doc’s shortly thereafter. It’s clear I need some kind of psychological intervention type help.
Those two things done, I must get up, get dressed, and get on. At the very least to make a determined effort to sell as much stuff as quickly as poss’. But also to find some other ways I might get some money in. Like some kind of ‘without wheels’ work, starting ASAP.
Despite or because of the ‘heaviness’ of this post, I feel the levity of Muppet-land as a source for accompanying imagery is apt.